Recently, Tiktok, Toutiao, watermelon videos, and other We media, whether big or small, have been able to brush their videos every day about a certain brand of car changing its aluminum oil pan into plastic, a certain brand of car changing its aluminum upper and lower arms into hollow steel tubes, and so on. It seems that the conscience of this car manufacturer is getting darker and darker, and the cutting of leeks is becoming more and more unscrupulous. It is said that some car manufacturers are dishonest, unconscionable The shameful and shameless actions taken by these car manufacturers in order to save costs are called upon to criticize and demand an explanation from these car manufacturers.
As an automotive repairman, we have long known this kind of thing, and it is also common in various brands of cars. Many car models have shown this trend ten years ago. As an automotive repairman, I believe that regardless of what material he replaces aluminum alloy parts with, even if he replaces us with parts made of mud, as long as the various indicators, lifespan, durability, fatigue resistance of this mud Wear resistance, corrosion resistance, tensile strength, and so on all meet the standards. In other words, compared to the original aluminum components, they are basically the same, and even inferior. Therefore, we have no reason to make excuses. After all, most of us buy cars based on quality and service life, rather than the materials they assemble for you, Even if you use gold to make all the parts for your car, but it causes you to break down on the road in three days, you can't bear it. The reason why a car has a relatively good reputation, a relatively high brand premium, and can still maintain its value must have one thing in common: quality must be good. The quality I am talking about here cannot be established in three years or two, and it must go through decades of technological precipitation, In actual car maintenance, we often find that certain parts of a car are made of metal aluminum and turn into engineering plastics when used. At that time, we would scoff and think that this is because the manufacturer is not really fooling consumers. There is another deep-seated reason we dislike in our hearts, which is that we believe that metal aluminum itself is expensive, has good appearance, and looks noble and high-end, Even if we sell scrap iron, it is still more valuable than your plastic. Nowadays, the manufacturer has replaced our originally aluminum parts with plastic ones, which is clearly bullying our consumers?
Our car's use of aluminum alloy body is determined by the advantages of aluminum alloy, a metal. If aluminum alloy is widely used in automobile manufacturing, it will reduce the total weight of the car, thereby reducing fuel consumption. Due to its low fuel consumption and light weight, the car's exhaust emissions will be reduced, and the degree of pollution will decrease. Aluminum alloy has good environmental protection and high recovery rate. It is known that aluminum is basically recyclable and can be recycled multiple times. After regeneration, its properties will remain basically unchanged regardless of what components are made, In my decades of automotive maintenance career, I have truly witnessed that the aluminum used in automotive manufacturing components has excellent corrosion resistance. When exposed to air, this type of aluminum can easily form a layer of oxide on the surface, separating the aluminum material from the air and preventing further corrosion by oxygen. Furthermore, aluminum, a metal with good processability, has good plasticity and rigidity. A certain thickness of aluminum can be used to manufacture key components of automobiles, such as shock absorber upper and lower support arms, aluminum alloy wheels, engine cylinder heads, oil pans, and so on. Aluminum has high energy absorption characteristics, making it an ideal material for manufacturing deformation zones of vehicle bodies to enhance passive safety, Some people will say that this aluminum component has been replaced with plastic by the manufacturer, and the manufacturer's conscience has been eaten by the dog?
If all manufacturers' consciences are eaten by dogs, it's not necessarily true. Some individual manufacturers may try to cut corners to calculate the money in consumers' pockets, but I believe that the vast majority of old brand car manufacturers dare not have this mentality, and they also do not have the courage, because they will not easily use their brand reputation to do something that is not worth the loss, As mentioned earlier, we have long discovered the replacement of aluminum components with plastic during car maintenance, and it is not uncommon. However, we have found that the quality of this plastic component is not as fragile and unbearable as we imagine after time verification, and even surpasses some so-called metal aluminum and other materials in terms of quality assurance. This is really beyond my expectations, Later on, we gradually learned that automobile manufacturers are not as casual as we imagine when building cars. Every component assembled needs to actually calculate the overall weight and interests of various aspects, even the thickness and weight of a balance bar, whether it can be hollow or not, the weight of a vertical pull arm in grams, the torque limit, whether it can be made of aluminum, steel, or engineering plastics, all of which are not casually cut corners, Even if you want to cut corners, you will never write articles in places where you can easily see the oil pan, upper and lower support arms, etc. From the perspective of an auto mechanic, some of the online statements and opinions are really unrealistic. We need to learn to look at the effect of things rather than the surface. Thank you for reading. If you have any different opinions, please comment in the comments. We will see you in the next issue